What Is MOQ (Media over QUIC) and Why It Matters

What is MOQ, and why is everyone in the live streaming industry talking about it? MOQ, short for Media over QUIC, is a new open standard being developed by the IETF to bring real-time, sub-second, and on-demand video into a single, modern protocol. In this blog, you will learn what MOQ is, how it works, how it differs from WebRTC, and what its development means for Red5 users and the future of live streaming.

What is MOQ?

What is Media Over Quic?

Last month, Brett Fasullo, David Engelmaier, and I attended IBC 2025 and RTC.On conference. We shared our takeaways in the IBC 2025 recap blog and this Youtube video about RTC.On. One of the most talked-about topics was MOQ, or Media over QUIC. One point of clarification is that it seems that everyone has settled on using just plain MOQ (pronounced like mock), and everyone is dropping the Media Over QUIC name.  

MOQ is a new live streaming protocol being developed as an open standard by the IETF. In parallel there are several open source projects being developed including a C++ version of a relay and other needed components of the MOQ spec being managed by the OpenMOQ Software Consortium, an organization founded by industry leaders including Red5, Akamai, CDN77, Cisco, Synamedia, YouTube. The consortium’s goal is to advance MOQ-based technology through high-performance, open-source software that powers the next generation of media transport. You can follow development progress and sign up for email updates.

While we are actively involved in the OpenMOQ organization our team is also actively working with other leaders in the MOQ space including Mike English and Renan Dincer from CloudFlare and Luke Curley (former Twitch and Discord Engineer). In fact one of our early goals with our first release of Red5’s MOQ will be integration with the CloudFlare CDN. 

MOQ aims to bring real-time, sub-second, and VOD into a single publish-subscribe protocol over QUIC. In practical terms, that could mean simpler client-server architectures, faster time to first frame, and more codec flexibility compared to browser-bound WebRTC stacks. 

Industry Insights

Morning coffee with tech industry news.

A few sessions about MOQ stood out for me at IBC and RTC.On conferences this year:

• Gwendal Simon, Senior Director of Technology at Synamedia, “OpenMOQ: A New Consortium to Advance MOQ” at IBC 2025. 
• Will Law, Chief Architect at Akamai, “A QUIC update on MOQ and WebTransport” at RTC.On in Kraków. 
• Ali C. Begen, Professor of Computer Science Department at Özyeğin University and the founder of the super cool MOQtail project, “Streaming Bad: Breaking Latency with MOQ” at RTC.On in Kraków. Check out his presentation on LinkedIn. 

These talks confirmed that MOQ is generating real momentum, but it’s still early. It’s experimental, evolving, and not yet widely deployed, which is perfectly fine. Every major protocol, including WebRTC, started small.

Is MOQ Replacing WebRTC?

MOQ vs WebRTC

That’s the question everyone’s been asking lately, and the answer is no, or at least not for a long time. As I shared in my “MOQ vs WebRTC” blog recently, both WebRTC and MOQ can and should coexist in the live streaming space. Check out this blog for a detailed comparison table explaining the differences between these two protocols.

• WebRTC continues to work extremely well for ultra-low latency streaming directly in browsers, where sub-250 ms performance is essential. It’s mature, proven at scale, and still evolving, with lower costs and better performance as infrastructure providers like OCI continue to improve networking and egress pricing. WebRTC will continue to be a solid choice for much time into the future especially as a video chat solution.

Diagram showing how WebRTC streaming works.

• MOQ, on the other hand, is a newer, simpler protocol that’s built from the ground up for client-server use. It benefits from modular open components like WebTransport and MSE, supports faster startup times, and already has strong backing from major industry players.

Diagram showing how MOQ streaming works.

These two technologies aren’t necessarily competing, they serve different purposes. WebRTC is perfect for video chat, interactive, browser-based workflows that demand immediate responsiveness, while MOQ is designed for scalable, high-performance real-time and cached streaming and VOD scenarios where flexibility and efficiency are key. That also said, MOQ isn’t ready yet for production use cases, although I think it’s coming rather soon given the current momentum.

What This Means for Red5 Users

At Red5, we’ve always been a protocol-agnostic company. We started with RTMP in the Flash days and now support RTSP, SRT, HLS, Zixi, WHIP and WHEP, and more. We recommend the protocols that best fit our customers’ use cases and requirements. MOQ is the next step in that evolution.

We plan to support MOQ in both Red5 Cloud and Red5 Pro by the end of 2025 so developers can choose it like any other transport. Features that our customers already rely on, such as multi-view, clipping, and DVR-style scrubbing, could all run under a single protocol instead of switching between WebRTC for live and HLS for replays. The outcome is the same, but with less complexity and overhead. That all said, the MOQ spec is in constant flux and actively being developed at the moment, so our goal is to get something out that is workable and simple to start. That means Red5’s initial version will be locked to one spec version, likely 14 or 15, and will be missing some of the full features like multi-tracks. We will add features as they become more stable in the future version of the IETF spec. 

Conclusion

In short, MOQ is shaping up to be a major step forward in real-time video transport, but it’s still early days. While WebRTC remains the best option for ultra-low-latency, browser-based streaming today, MOQ promises a more flexible and scalable architecture for future use cases. At Red5, we’re already helping shape that future through the OpenMOQ Consortium and plan to bring MOQ support to Red5 Pro and Red5 Cloud by the end of 2025.

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